Master in Financial Management

The Master in Financial Management has been designed to enable you to acquire a comprehensive perspective along with the necessary skills that will make you a contributor of competitive advantages and creator of value for your company.

Management skills.

• Interpersonal communication.
• Leadership and innovation.
• Leadership styles.
• Negotiation techniques.

Company analysis.

• Indicators which measure leverage, liquidity, the company's efficiency and profitability.
• Variables that can lead to improvements in the company's economic and financial profitability.
• Databases for a comprehensive sector analysis of companies.

Working assets management.

• Conceptual Framework
  The optimal size of working assets and of their short term financing.
  How to calculate the needs for operating funds (NOF) and their financial repercussions for companies undergoing growth, stabilisation or decline.
• Credit Management
  Assessment, control and follow-up of loans to clients.
• Cash Management
  Calculating the minimum cash and banks that a company needs.
  Cash and banks management practices.
  Cash pooling.
• Banking negotiation and financial products.
  Current options for depositing cash surpluses.
  Short term financial products for covering cash and banks deficits.
  Key aspects involved in banking negotiation.
  How to invest excess cash flow: the money market.

Strategic Planning and The Business Plan.

• How to go about drawing up a business plan.
• External strategic analysis.
• Organisational structure.
• Skills and resources.
• The structure of the business plan.

Financial planning.

• How to quantify the strategic plan by drawing up the financial plan.
• How to draw up and discuss the Annual budget.
• Models for drawing up a LT financial plan: Capital budgeting and flows forecasting.
• Studying scenarios and contingency plans.
• Financial Plan management and appraisal systems.

Investment analysis and appraisal.

• The relationship between investment project profitability and value creation.
  The impact of taxation on investment analysis and allocation.
  Investment project appraisal models.
  Flows that need to be taken into account in investment projects.
  The relationship between the discount rate, free cash flow and shareholder cash flow.
  The risk variable and how to calculate the refresh rate.
  Sensitivity analysis and drawing up scenarios and decision trees.
  How companies go about organising the investment process.

Corporate finance (I)

• The capital asset pricing model and the Modigliani Miller model:
• How to calculate and interpret the weighted average cost of capital (WACC).
• Criteria for working out the optimal financing structure.
• Limits to the use of debt.
• What does the self financing and dividends policy depend on?
• The financial restructuring of the company.

Corporate finance (II)

• Company valuation methods:
  Dividend discounting.
  Cash flow discounting.
  Comparable multiples.
• Indicators for measuring value creation: EVA, CVA and MVA.
• A typology of corporate operations: mergers, takeovers, MBO, LBO, etc.
• Keys to successful takeovers and mergers
• Common practices in non publicly traded companies, family firms and SMB's.
• How companies are bought and sold.

Capital markets.

• How the stock market and derivatives market work.
• The initial public offering process.
• The distinction between an IPO and a Takeover Bid.

International Finance.

• Derivative instruments for exchange rate and interest rate risk coverage.
• Derivative instruments for coverage of possible fluctuations in the price of raw materials.
• Financing exports and overseas investments.

Management Control

• Results based control: Centres of responsibility and financial indicators.
• Creating value.
• The balanced scorecard: communication, follow-up and control of the strategic plan.

Information Systems

• Information systems organisation / ICT inside the company.
• ERP systems (Enterprise Resource Planning).
• The advantages and drawbacks of setting up an ERP system.

Strategic Finance.

Synthesis and consolidation of the programme by analysing and discussing real case studies

Final Project.

Participants will be asked to prepare a final project during the course of the programme. The project is based on real business situations and is an opportunity for putting all the programme subject matter into practice. The presentation of the project, its preliminary preparation and posterior analysis by teachers and participants are an ideal opportunity for furthering the personal development process and the acquisition of management skills and techniques.